Not compared to lawyers. Lawyers are the smartest by far.
Well your theory is that so many journalists are Liberals because they are smart. Journalists aren't that smart. Period. Not compared to other white collar professionals.
The real reason, which is my theory, is education and schooling and our die-hard, ultra-Left wing Universities in this country...as this journalist himself writes. They aren't that smart, as he points out. Conservatives often go for higher paying jobs (because they can get them and journalists cannot), but his theory holds water - these journalists go through a brainwashing process and are steeped in a Liberal bubble for their careers.
http://conservatives4palin.com/2011/01/why-the-media-leans-left-a-personal-perspective.html
Why the Media Lean Left – A Personal Perspective
Why is it, in fact, that so many journalists are liberal?
I have to go back to my own training and career in journalism. I was raised in a conservative-leaning home in Northern Utah, by Mormon parents. Then something radical happened. I went to college and decided to major in journalism and political science. Each of my journalism and political science instructors even at a red state public university were hardcore liberals. Many of my classmates, and best friends in college were liberal. I came to adopt the assumptions and worldviews of those around me. I don’t think my experience is unique.
What is it about journalism that attracts — and breeds — liberals?
For one, I’d have to concede that journalism is not a mainstream major or career. It’s akin to majoring in art history or sociology. When you tell most "normal" people you’re majoring in journalism, they immediately give you a look of complete pity and apprehension, as was the case when I told my mother that I planned to become a newspaper reporter. She asked: “Can you make a living doing that?”...
Looking back at the journalists I’ve worked with over the years, however, most remain in their liberal bubbles, surrounded by likeminded liberals, convinced that they alone are doing idealistic work for the mythically oppressed – sometimes even as they “sell out” for media-related jobs in corporate America. They often wear their distain for Republicans, capitalists, corporations, the military, and organized religion on their sleeves, as if religious Republicans or the American military are the source of all oppression and injustice. Hey, we’re all products of our prejudices.
Even the business press is not immune. The last editor I worked for refused to let our staff portray Social Security negatively or refer to its ponzi scheme characteristics. He must be doing his best to cover up news that Social Security is now running a permanent deficit. I am so not missing being under his thumb.
In journalism school, Republicans are viewed largely as caricatures: heartless and greedy, and as always attempting to shove religion down people’s throats by opposing legalized abortion.
If you step foot on any major college campus, you will gain an insight into why journalists are liberal. Colleges bring together large numbers of people who run to the ideological left. Indeed, universities (especially humanities and communication departments) are havens and hotbeds for people who don’t fit in ideologically with the larger community or the center-right country at large. They are mini-Berkeleys and Haight Ashburies.
And so are newsrooms. For three years, I worked for a daily newspaper in Logan, Utah – one of the most conservative cities on the planet. But you’d never know it from the newsroom, which was filled with environmental extremists, hardcore feminists, and leftover 60s radicals. This small-town newsroom was so disconnected from the community it served, it still blows my mind. It was like a time warp. Outside the newsroom it was 1990 … Inside, 1970. Newsrooms, in general, are filled with iconoclasts, curmudgeons, and cultural rebels, even in small towns – and perhaps, especially in small towns. While a whopping 80% of my community was Mormon, I can only recall two reporters out of a dozen or more I worked with who were active members of any faith, let alone the predominant religion. I would dare say 80% of the newspaper staff was either agnostic or atheistic, especially among the editor ranks. Most of the staff, in fact, were secular East Coast and Upper Midwest transplants who flocked to Utah for the outdoor environment, not the cultural landscape.
Why the disconnect? Why don’t more conservatives go into journalism? Why are the devoutly religious severely under-represented in newsrooms?
I think it’s because conservatives have tended to pursue more traditional careers, jobs that pay better or that would lend themselves to family life in suburban or rural settings — closer to home. Even Governor Palin was forced to give up her career in sports journalism for family life. She no doubt would have had to relocate from Alaska to pursue her dreams of working for ESPN. She would have had to have been willing to move wherever the job took her, and that, often, I believe influences the transitory and cosmopolitan nature of the newsroom. So few of the people covering the "locals" are themselves "local."
For whatever reason, journalism is still not the cultural equivalent of a career in accounting. Journalism is predominantly of, for, and by liberals – a career for those who either eschew normalcy, lean urban, or prefer the counter culture, kinda like a career in graphic arts or jazz.
Will this ever change?
Not likely. Especially as newsrooms are increasingly hit by economic reality. But I think we’ve reached a tipping point. I think it is now liberals who have become the establishment, and conservatives are the new rebels. Liberals dominate the culture: schools, media, courts, entertainment, some churches, and most of the federal government. How can they claim to be counter cultural when they run the culture? Moreover, just as fish don’t notice water, liberals in newsrooms don’t notice when nearly nine out of ten of their colleagues share their same liberal world view, the same view they perceive as “mainstream.”
We may very well see a conservative Woodward and Bernstein emerging from the right as a new generation rebels against their Baby Boomer predecessors. The pro-life and Tea Party movements are fertile ground for young conservatives to rock the liberal establishment.
That being said, thankfully, liberal journalists have lost their monopoly power on information. We may never see a rightward shift by the “mainstream” media. But conservative consumers are voting with their feet, their ears and their eyes – getting their news elsewhere, including talk radio, Fox News, and the blogosphere, where conservatism thrives.
As much as it pains me to say this about my former colleagues, I long for the day when much of the liberal “mainstream” media is rendered irrelevant, a footnote in history, an aberration in the long flow of human communication. I long for what Dan Calabrese at North Star National sees as an impending Berlin Wall moment for the mainstream media.
